%0 Journal Article
%T Healing the heart of recovery
%A Jackie Liggins
%J International Journal of Social Psychiatry
%@ 1741-2854
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0020764018796538
%X Medicine is traditionally considered a healing profession, yet concepts of healing are rarely applied to mental illness, recovery being the dominant discourse. This article reports one aspect of the results of a broader exploration, through a service user lens, of aspects of place that facilitate healing in mental health care, with a resulting conceptualisation of healing. The research material comprised the author¡¯s historical writings of her experience of mental illness and recovery and in-depth individual interviews with 10 mental health service users. Analysed thematically, emerging ideas were further developed through an autoethnographically informed, reflexive and iterative process. Healing is necessary when there has been a disruption of integrity and wholeness, experienced as suffering. Offering opportunities for connection, integration and transformation, and acquiring wisdom along the way, healing is a journey of exploration that takes time and is hard work. Healing is conceptualised as the intensely personal experience at the heart of recovery, reminding us of the fundamental personal processes at the heart of our journeys. As a universal human experience, healing potentially removes the sense of othering that is at the heart of mental illness stigma
%K Healing
%K recovery
%K service user research
%K mental illness
%K autoethnography
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0020764018796538